Spend Your Way to Wealth – Secret #4 – Part 2

3:13 Okay, it's time to get started with today's study in Proverbs chapter 21. I titled the message, Spend Your Way to Wealth. Does God want us to have financial margin? Does He want us to have this buffer zone between what we spend and what we earn? I need to offer a caution here about what the Bible says about finances. There is a difference in the Bible between saving money and hoarding money. The Bible draws a distinction between saving and hoarding. You know what saving is? It's setting aside a reasonable amount of money to meet future expected and unexpected needs. Saving is setting aside a reasonable amount of money to provide for future expected and unexpected needs. You know what hoarding is? It's stockpiling as much money as you possibly can to protect yourself from every adversity in life. And of course that's impossible. But a person who is a hoarder doesn't understand that. He's the guy who's always running around, turning off lights, realizing that he's probably costing more by the wear and tear on the light bulbs and the energy he's saving doing so. He's the person who will drive across town to save a nickel on a loaf of bread, oblivious to the gas that he spends doing so. He's the kind of person who will never take a vacation. He never has quite enough money because he's always saving for a rainy day instead of enjoying the sunshine of the present day.

4:45 That's what a hoarder does. Listen to Ecclesiastes 5.13. Solomon says, There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun, riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. You see, the problem with hoarding money is it robs you of the joy God wants you to have in this life as well. And when we're talking about financial margin, we're not talking about being a hoarder of money. We're talking about setting aside a reasonable amount in the present to take care of future expected and unexpected needs. What are the benefits of doing what Solomon said, of not consuming everything you make and setting some aside? I want you to notice in the Bible, there are three benefits of having financial margin, a buffer zone between your income and your expenditures. Number one, financial margin offers freedom to do the right thing. Years ago, I was listening to Dr. Laura Schlesinger.

5:43 Remember her? Who gave the advice on the radio all the time? Everybody listened to Dr. Laura. I was driving somewhere and had it turned on to Dr. Laura. And this lady called in and she said, Dr. Laura, I don't know what to do. Said, my father's been diagnosed with cancer. He lives in another state and I would love to go visit him before he dies. But I can't afford to take off work the two weeks. I can't survive without two weeks of a paycheck. And not only that, I don't have the money for an airplane ticket without going ahead and racking it up on my overextended credit card. What should I do? Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma. She had two choices and neither one of them was good. Do I experience financial insolvency? Or do I experience a lifetime of regret for not seeing my dad? See, that's the kind of choice you have or lack of choice when you have no financial margin. Financial margin gives us the freedom to do what we need to do.

6:44 Financial margin, having that buffer zone, allows you to change jobs and do something you really want to do in life. Financial margin allows you to take that mission trip that you've been dying to take. Financial margin allows you to start that new business that God has placed on your heart to start. All of us need financial margin in our life. It is the freedom. It provides the freedom to do the right thing. In his book, The Official Guide to Success, Tom Hopkins describes the benefit of financial margin. He just has another name for it. He calls it go to town money. Listen to this. He says, millions of people stay in jobs they hate or they settle for less than they should get because they don't have any go-to-town money. What is that? It's enough money to allow you to face change with a stout heart. How much go-to-town money do you need?

7:37 Whatever it takes to make you feel strong enough to risk losing what you have now in order to reach for a greater opportunity. This is the executive's equivalent of a strike fund. It's the salesperson's ace in the hole. It's everybody's holdout money. Go-to-town money provides you with extra courage and clear-headedness to meet the surprises and alarms of life. If it improves your performance under the pressure of a tough negotiation, it can double or triple your rate of climb. But if having go-to-town money makes you impossibly bullheaded, putting it aside will be one of the worst mistakes you ever make. When I read that last line about the wrong use of margin or go-to-town money, I think of my friend, the late Dr. Landrum Level, who for many years was the president of New Orleans Seminary. And I remember Dr. Level telling me one time about a pastor friend of his who lived in Mississippi. And this pastor had one goal in life. He wanted to accumulate $1 million. He was obsessed with the idea of getting $1 million. And Dr. Level asked him one day, why are you so fixated on having a million dollars? He said, because Dr. Level, as soon as I have that $1 million, I'll be able to tell my deacons to go to hell.

9:02 Now, that guy was mistaking go-to-hell money with go-to-town money. They're different, okay? There's a big difference. I doubt God is ever going to answer that pastor's request in prayer. Now, listen. You see, financial margin is the freedom not to do what's wrong, but it's the freedom to do what's right. I contrast that pastor to another pastor I heard Dr. Criswell tell about years ago. He was a Florida minister of a Presbyterian church. And one day, the leaders of the church came into this Presbyterian minister, and they said, we think it's time for you to go. We're tired of you. It's time for you to leave. But his reaction surprised the church leaders. He said, fine. If you want me to leave, I'll leave. I have plenty of money to retire on. but he said you know if you would like me to stay I'd be willing to stay and work for no salary because this is my calling this is my ministry well the response so startled those church leaders that suddenly their perception of their pastor changed no longer did they see him as a financial drain they saw him as an asset to the church they not only kept him they continued to pay him by the way don't get any ideas there okay Thank you.

10:18 But you see, that's what financial margin does. It gives us the freedom to do not what is wrong, but to do what is right. You say, well, we ought to do what's right whether we have financial margin or not, shouldn't we? Yeah, we should. But there are a lot of things we should do that we don't do. We're flawed human beings. We're sinful human beings. And God understands that. And that's why God's plan for all of our lives is that we have financial margin in our life. In Proverbs 10 verse 15, Solomon wrote, the rich man's wealth is his fortress, but the ruin of the poor is their poverty. You see, when you have no financial margin in life, you're forced like that lady that called Dr. Laura to make some very bad choices sometimes. A few years ago, there was a movie that came out with Denzel Washington called John Q. Some of you may have seen it. Story about a man who couldn't afford health insurance for his family, and his young son needed an operation.

11:20 And so not having health insurance, he had to raise a large sum of money very quickly. The only way he could do it was to start selling everything that he had. He was on the street with all of his possessions from his apartment. And among those possessions was a new television set that he had purchased. A guy comes up and pulls out a $20 bill and offers him $20 for the television set. Denzel Washington said, well, it's worth a lot more than that. The guy growled and said, not to me, not to me. And he was forced to sell it for $20. You see, when you have no financial margin, you don't have the ability to make wise decisions. You say, well, shouldn't Solomon have written, God is my fortress instead of wealth is my fortress? Don't miss this point. We're going to see this time and next time. Trusting in money is no substitute for trusting in God. In fact, there's no amount of money that can save you from a cancer cell that metastasizes in your body.

12:22 There's no amount of money that can protect you against the loss of a loved one. No, there's some things money cannot do. But Solomon's point is, God's plan for our life is that we have some margin so that we can have the freedom to do what's right. Secondly, financial margin provides the security for future needs. Financial margin provides security for future needs. Consuming less than you earn over a long period of time is God's way to provide for your future, especially those big ticket items in your life. You know, most people could not pay college education, college tuition bills for one or two kids in school at the same time out of their current cash flow. Most people, young couples, if they wanted to purchase a house and had to make a $30,000 down payment, they couldn't say, oh, we'll just take that out of this week's check. I mean, most people can't do that. Most people, when they think about retirement, would find it very difficult to live on social security alone. The fact is, we all know that there are some big ticket expenditures coming into our life that we're going to have to pay for. The question is, how are we going to pay for those things? Well, somebody says, well, I'm going to trust God.

13:35 I'm just going to trust God. Well, you won't get any argument from me about the importance of trusting God. But the question is not, can God provide for my future needs? The question is, how is God going to provide for my future needs? And the way God has designed to take care of our financial needs in the future is through this principle of margin, spending less than you earn over a long period of time. Turn over to Proverbs chapter six, where you find this principle. Proverbs six, beginning with verse six, Solomon wrote, go to the aunt, O sluggard, and observe her ways and be wise, which having no chief officer or ruler prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest. Now an ant has a brain so small you can't see it under a microscope. But even an ant has the common sense to know that the plentiful food that's available in the summer and the fall will not last forever. The ant has the wisdom to take some of the bounty of the summer and fall and store it away for the wintertime. You know the ant could say well look at all of this food. It's going to be all you can eat buffet today for me and my family. We're just going to gorge ourselves, get while the getting's good. Not the ant. The ant understands that the plentiful harvest will not last forever. And so it sets aside some of the excess in the present to take care of the future. You see the same principle of creating margin for future needs in the well-known story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis chapter 41. Do you remember that story? God sent Pharaoh a troubling dream, and here was the dream. He said, Pharaoh, and in the dream, you had the dream of seven fat cows coming out of the Nile River. And then those seven fat cows were followed by seven lean, skinny cows coming out of the Nile River. Pharaoh didn't understand it. He went to Joseph for an interpretation. And Joseph said, this is what God is saying to you. He's saying there's

15:44 going to be seven years of plentiful harvest here in Egypt. We're going to have so much grain, we're not going to know what to do with it. But those seven years of harvest, of bounty, are going to be followed by seven lean years of famine. So Pharaoh, here's what we should do. We should take some of the excess we have, exactly 20% of the excess we have over the next seven years, we ought to store it for our future needs. And Pharaoh saw the wisdom and he ordered Joseph to do just that. Now, think about this. Was Pharaoh storing up grain for the future? Was that a sign of a lack of faith in God? No. It was actually a sign that he did believe in God. He believed what God had said and he acted accordingly. Isn't that what faith is? Believing what God has said and acting accordingly. He believed what God said about a future famine. He believed what God said when he said, right now you have more than you need, but in seven years, you're going to need more than you have. So you better take some of the excess now to prepare for the future.

16:49 That was a sign of faith on Pharaoh's part. Now follow me on this. Did you know God has said the same thing to you and me? He has said to every one of us here, every one of us watching this program, He is saying to you, there is a time of financial famine coming into your life. Every one of us is going to face it. And by financial famine, I'm going to mean there's going to be a time in your life when your needs are greater than your current income. That time may be when your kids are going to college. It may be when you have to start caring for your elderly parents. It certainly will probably be when you face retirement. You're going to have greater needs than you have income. So how do you prepare for that time of financial famine? Just like Pharaoh did. To go ahead right now and start setting aside some of your current income to provide for those future needs.

17:46 Number three, what does financial margin offer us? It gives us freedom to do what's right. It offers us security in preparing for future needs, just like God tells us. Thirdly, financial margin allows us to experience the joy of supporting God's work. It allows us to experience the joy of supporting God's work. When I left here in 1985 to go pastor my first church in West Texas, the church had a few part-time staff members, but no full-time staff members. The pastor had been the only full-time staff position they had. And so when I arrived at the church and tried to figure out what was needed, I knew one of the first things we needed to do was to hire a full-time staff member, an educational staff member who would oversee the growth of our Sunday school. I was convinced that if we hired the right educational director, the church would grow and the position would be more than pay for itself. Well, the leaders were not convinced.

18:45 They said, pastor, if you do this, you are going to bankrupt the church. We cannot afford to have a full-time staff member. And so a friend of mine, a member of the church, an oil man there in the church, he said, pastor, I agree with you. We need this. And so I want to help you with it. He said, I just discovered I owned an extra oil well. I had no idea I owned this oil well. Wouldn't that be nice to have an extra oil well? I don't want you to think about that too long. But he said, I found this extra oil well and I'm willing to give it to the church and you can use the production from that oil well to pay this new staff member's salary. I was so excited. I went and met with the leaders of the church, the deacons, and I said, you know, we've got this guy and he's going to give an oil well and we can pay for the staff member. They looked at me and they said, what if the well runs out of oil? So I went back to Chris and I said, well, they're afraid that the well's going to run out of oil. And Chris laughed and he said, well, I've got the geological surveys.

19:46 We'll take them and show the leaders there's more than enough oil to pay for that staff member. The well will last longer than the staff member does probably. So we took the geological surveys to the leaders. They looked at them and they said, still not convinced. So I said, okay. I said to the leaders, I said, if the well runs out of oil, I will guarantee personally the staff member's salary for a year. they looked at me and they said, what are you talking about pastor? We don't pay you enough to do that. And they were absolutely right about that. But the only way I could make that offer was I had some financial margin through the years. I had accumulated some excess that I had set aside where I could use for projects just like this. And when they heard that, you know what they decided?

20:42 they said, let's go ahead and hire the staff member. And they did it without my friend's oil well or without my assets either. That's what financial margin allows you to do. It allows you the joy of investing in God's work. And by the way, that is the principle that Paul taught the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 16 verse 2. I want you to turn over to 1 Corinthians 16 verse 2, where Paul describes the relationship between financial margin and supporting God's work. Now, many of you have heard this verse before. You've probably seen it on an offering envelope before, but never really understood what it's teaching. 1 Corinthians 16, verse 2, Paul said to the Corinthian church, on the first day of every week, let each one of you put aside and save as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come. Now, a lot of people interpret this verse to say, okay, on the first day of the week, you ought to give your offering to support the local church.

21:41 That's not what it's talking about. The Bible does teach we ought to give and give generously to support the ministry of the local church. The local church is God's design to fulfill the Great Commission. As we'll see next time, I believe the tithe is the starting place for what we give to the local church, not to any other thing. To the local church, it's the starting place. The church is God's design plan for fulfilling the Great Commission. But that's not what this verse is talking about. You know how I know that? Look and see again what he says. On the first day of every week, let each one of you put aside and save. Not put aside and give. Put aside and save. He is talking about giving beyond the tithe. He said, Corinthian church, we've got a need in Jerusalem. Some of the Christians there are living in poverty. And I'm gonna come through Corinth soon and I'm gonna take up a special offering.

22:34 But when I come, I wanna be sure there's some money there for you to give. So I want you for the next few weeks on the first day of every week, set aside some money and save it so that when I come and collect the offering, there'll be money for you to give to this special need in the church. Now we used to have this verse on our offering envelope. I had it taken off because this doesn't have to do with giving our weekly gifts to the church. This is about a special offering for special needs in the church. And one of the things about having margin is it allows you to support those special needs, those special opportunities as they come up in God's work. Financial margin gives us the joy, allows us to experience the joy of investing, supporting God's work. Freedom to do what's right, security for future needs, the joy of supporting God's work. Those are the benefits of margin.

23:30 There's nothing like margin to infuse some peace into our lives. It takes the panic out of managing our family finances, and margin allows us to provide resources for things we care deeply about, like giving to the local church or supporting the ministries you've grown to love and respect. So, are you ready to build some margin into your life? Let me suggest that you take a first step today and begin to apply the wisdom of Solomon. I've written a best-selling book that coincides with this teaching series. It's called The Solomon Secrets. My book addresses topics like the one we spoke about today and nine other relevant subjects, such as learning to control our emotions, listening to our critics, and turning failure into success. When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll send a copy of my book to your home.

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